Daylight Saving time

Next update to Piced.
Darren, Can the new times be included in next version for the states that count.

NSW, Vic, ACT to extend daylight saving
Two Australian states and a territory have agreed to Tasmania's proposal to join its longer daylight saving period.
The move will bring NSW, Victoria, the ACT into the same daylight saving period as Tasmania - from the first Sunday in October until the first Sunday in April.


dave

 

Just so the default is changed in next build of Piced, then will have go around to each site and change when it kicks in because these dam users expect the clock to be correct.


dave

 

The obvious solution is to provide a way to adjust the Start and Finish date via a User Interface (on touchscreens), in the same way that the Time is adjustable by the user.

I just programmed some Telemechanique SR2 B121FU relays - these have a (crude) user interface where you can adjust schedule times, clock time and teh day on which Daylight Svaings starts and finishes. It's easy enough for a User to do by following instructions over the phone.

The solution doesn't need to be all that "pretty" - the Telem. units use a simple DayOfWeek/WeekOfMonth/Month setting for start and finish, shown on a tiny LCD screen. Could something like that be encorporated into the firmware of the screens?

 

I assume your omission of SA from the "states that count" was accidental

Daylight Savings is a real problem (as Ashleigh said), particularly when governments go arbitrarily changing "the rules". The PICED software reads the rules from the operating system. Occasionally there are Windows updates which incorporate changes to these rules and then PICED gets these automatically.

It is not practical for us to try to override the rules in the operating system on a case by case basis. There are hundreds of states/countries which could potentially change from time to time and keeping up with this would be a huge job.

If the government in your area has decided on a whim to change the rules with no consideration for the millions of bits of software which this affects, and there isn't a Windows update to fix it, then there is a very simple solution. Create a project template which contains the correct daylight savings settings (along with your company details on so on) and use that as the basis of all projects.

Once a project has been transferred to a unit, it is still possible to change the daylight savings settings :

• In Black and White C-Touch, you can just edit the Schedules which control the daylight savings. The schedule editing options are going to be improved in the next release.
• In colour C-Touch, you can edit the daylight savings settings directly by opening the project details form (there is a Special Function to allow you to do this).
• It is generally a bad idea to rely on the PAC to control daylight savings as there is no user interface to allow you to make changes to the schedules (or to the date/time for that matter).

 

Darren
Tks for information always good to get the finer points from the master.
Will Bills boys in Redmound on the case.
Knowing the settings come from Windows I will have to watch when doing a project not in NSW. Does Piced match the setting from the development PC or lookup the location in the Piced project and than match that to the Windows setting.
ie Development PC set to NSW and Piced project set to Brisbane ??

dave

 

When you start a new project (assuming you have not used a template), it selects the time zone for your PC. You can change this in the Project Details Wizard, and it gets stored as part of that project. The easiest way to set it is to click the Select Other Time Zone button on the Daylight Savings page of the Project Details Wizard, then select the time zone (Sydney, Brisbane etc) and all of the details for that time zone will be read from the operating system and put on the form.